BILLY JOEL
Full Speed Ahead
On the eve of his 100th performance at Madison Square Garden, the ‘Piano Man’ is still revving up the music scene.
On July 18, Billy Joel will leave his estate on Long Island’s North Shore to take a 15-minute helicopter ride to Manhattan for what will be his 100th career performance at Madison Square Garden. For the last four years, the “Piano Man” has been “in residence” at the iconic, 20,000-plus seat arena, each month performing sold-out shows to adoring audiences. And later this year, on Sept. 7 at Chicago’s Wrigley Field and Sept. 21 at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., he will cap off his concert tour of Major League Baseball stadiums across the nation.
Since joining his first band in 1964, Joel has sold more than 150 million albums, toured the globe and become a rock legend and one of the richest entertainers in the world. “I’m a very lucky man,” he says.
He also has triumphed over very difficult odds. As a Jewish boy, he was haunted by the deaths of his father’s family in the Holocaust. When Joel was 8, his parents, Howard Joel and Rosalind (Nyman), divorced and his mom struggled to raise him and his sister, Judy, on an income so limited that Joel went to work at 14 playing piano in a local bar to help support them.
During his rise to superstardom, he attempted suicide, crashed three cars, had a double hip replacement and three failed marriages, was swindled out of millions of dollars and twice entered residential rehab for substance abuse. But through it all, he wrote and released hits like “The Stranger,”“Just the Way You Are,”“She’s Always a Woman,”“It’s Still Rock and Roll to Me,”“New York State of Mind,” “Uptown Girl,”“The Entertainer” and the song that came to be his calling card, “Piano Man.”
Parade visited Joel at his motorcycle gallery, 20th Century Cycles, in Oyster Bay, a hamlet on a harbor of the Long Island Sound. Joel, 69, lives a few minutes away with his fourth wife, Alexis Roderick, 36, and their two daughters, Remy, 1, and Della, almost 3. Roderick, a former wealth-management planner for Morgan Stanley, and Joel married in 2015. Joel has another daughter, Alexa Ray, now 32, from his nine-year marriage to model Christie Brinkley, his second wife. He was also previously married to Elizabeth Weber Small and to chef and Food Network personality Katie Lee.
Sitting at a table in the gallery, Joel basks momentarily in a breeze that wafts through an open door, lights a cigar and smiles.
How many motorcycles do you own?
There’s about a hundred. They’re a lot cheaper than cars and they’re fun to mess with.
You love boats too. Yeah. I grew up about 15 miles south of here in the middle of Long Island. As
a little kid, I always liked boats and the romance of living on an island.
Is that why you try to help local fishermen and lobstermen? Your songs often speak for working people. [ Joel has raised millions to help the East Hampton Baymen’s Association.]
I’m not a spokesman for anybody, but I know these guys and I write what I see. If you’re a fisherman and you’re out of work, there’s no safety net; you’re screwed. I relate to that. I’ve been criticized for writing about unemployed factory workers and fishermen. I know exactly what I’m talking about. We musicians invented unemployment. Look up “unemployed” in the dictionary, and there’s a picture of a musician.
Was your childhood difficult?
My mom had a tough time struggling to make ends meet. Women who had to work weren’t treated very nicely.There were no goodpaying jobs for women then.
Your dad was a classical pianist. Why didn’t you go into classical music?
I did play classical music the first 12 years that I took lessons. I got pretty good. But I didn’t have the ambition to be a concert pianist. I knew I wasn’t going to be Beethoven. I wanted to write my own music.
When did you decide you wanted to be a rock star?
I was 14 or 15 in 1964, and I was asked to be in a rock band. Couple of guys played guitars, I played keyboards. It was my first gig. We got hired to play at a church dance. We sounded pretty good. Everybody’s clapping, kids are dancing and a girl I had a crush on was actually looking at me, a girl who hadn’t looked twice at me before. I was thrilled.The end of the night, the priest gives us each $15. I said, “You mean you get paid for this?” That was it! This is what I’m going to do.
When did you start writing your own songs?
Around that time. I started writing ersatz Beatle tunes.
Why the Beatles?
They weren’t pretty boys, like Fabian and Frankie Avalon.They looked like working-class guys from Liverpool. They weren’t Pat Boone pushing a religious agenda. I remember the look on their faces on The
Ed Sullivan Show: They were kidding around, having fun, like they couldn’t believe their luck. They wrote their own music.They played their own instruments. The Beatles put it all together.
When you were 23, you moved to L.A. for three years. Why?
In the early ’70s, L.A. was the center of the music business.
Cold Spring Harbor, my first album, was recorded in Los Angeles. It was a bad record deal. I signed away my rights, everything. And I went on a tour and nobody got paid. To make a living, I got a job in a piano bar in L.A.
Why do entertainers get swindled so often?
We’re myopic. Musicians, you know, aren’t looking at the account books. That’s all an abstraction to us. My theory was, if I get good enough, I’ll be able to make a living.That’s all I ever wanted to do.
Madison Square Garden is the biggest arena in New York, and you now fill it every month.
I think that’s luck. I’m from New York. Madison Square Garden’s my hometown venue. It was natural for them to pick me to play there. We sell [seats] in the round every night. A lot of acts don’t play the back [of the arena], just the front. We play it all.
Why do crowds keep coming?
I’m an unlikely candidate for a rock star. I don’t look like a rock star. I’m like the eternal underdog. In my lyrics, there’s a lot of acknowledgment that I’m a screw-up—I’m human. I’m as lost as you are; I’m just trying to find my way. I guess people like that.
In the last 12 years or so, you’ve written only two songs. Why did you stop?
I couldn’t be as good as I wanted to be. It drove me crazy.The drinking was part of it. If I couldn’t be as good as I wanted to be, I’d just drown it with booze.
You have a reputation for being unhappy.
I know I’ve got a reputation that I’m this depressed guy. I’m not—I’m a happy guy. Yeah, OK, I was in rehab twice.
The first time in rehab, in ’02, I wouldn’t even stay.The second time, at Betty Ford [2005], was not a lot of fun. [But] it was one of the best things I ever did.
What about drugs?
I’ve tried everything; I’m a musician, come on. But I never had a problem with that.
Did fame cost you marriages?
Yeah. I was on the road. I was gone all the time. It’s not good for a relationship. I ended up doing what my dad did. He was never home. I wanted to be a home dad, which I am now. I have two little kids, and if I’m not working at the Garden or at a stadium, I’m home with them.
You’ve been married four times. What attracts you to women?
Oh, God, everything! I love women. My whole life is women. My children are women. My wives are women. It’s a great muse to write about, relationships with women.
[Second wife] Christie Brinkley said she was your muse.
Of course she was! She’s the most beautiful woman in the world—what was she doing with me?! Women are fascinating. Women are deep, man.
What are you proudest of?
My ability to move on with life. I’ve had difficulties, but it never stopped me. Divorces didn’t stop me marrying again. Troubles with business didn’t stop me from doing business. I have no bitterness about anything, even people who rip me off. I’m content with that. I’m happy. I’m having a happy ending.
Visit Parade.com/joel to find out what Joel says is his secret to success. Hint: It’s not luck or talent.